Pay Pal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel has given $1.25 million to an initiative to create floating libertarian countries in international waters, according to a profile of the billionaire in Details magazine.

Thiel has been a big backer of the Seasteading Institute, which seeks to build sovereign nations on oil rig-like platforms to occupy waters beyond the reach of law-of-the-sea treaties. The idea is for these countries to start from scratch--free from the laws, regulations, and moral codes of any existing place. Details says the experiment would be "a kind of floating petri dish for implementing policies that libertarians, stymied by indifference at the voting booths, have been unable to advance: no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons."

"There are quite a lot of people who think it's not possible," Thiel said at a Seasteading Institute Conference in 2009, according to Details. (His first donation was in 2008, for $500,000.) "That's a good thing. We don't need to really worry about those people very much, because since they don't think it's possible they won't take us very seriously. And they will not actually try to stop us until it's too late."

The Seasteading Institute's Patri Friedman says the group plans to launch an office park off the San Francisco coast next year, with the first full-time settlements following seven years later.

Thiel made news earlier this year for putting a portion of his $1.5 billion fortune into an initiative to encourage entrepreneurs to skip college.

Another tech titan, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced in June that he would be funding the "Clock of the Long Now." The clock is designed to keep ticking for 10,000 years, and will be built in a mountain in west Texas.

by Anonymous

reply 55

05/06/2013

If you can put one Libertarian on an island....

by Anonymous

reply 1

08/17/2011

Dear God, let them all move there, and take all the other right-wingers with them.

Putting all the wingnuts on a man-made island with loose building codes and plenty of weapons. I mean really, what's not to love about that?

by Anonymous

reply 4

08/17/2011

I'm classical liberal (some might call me a libertarian) and I bet I'm way more progressive than any of you. Yes, there are right wing douchebag libertarians who are selfish but there are more varieties of Libertarian than there are democrats. So don't worry, we'll never get our shit together to agree on anything and gain power. Kind of like Democrats.

by Anonymous

reply 5

08/17/2011

I hope they put some of their artificial islands in international waters infested with heavily armed pirates. It'd be the perfect test of their committment and self-suficiency.

by Anonymous

reply 6

08/17/2011

Silly man- basically an off shore tax haven- the rest he will find out for himself.

by Anonymous

reply 7

08/17/2011

Hmmm, let me see: a bunch of greedy, self-centered antiestablishment douchebags on an island having to create a livable community that should function as a state. That should work out very well for them...

by Anonymous

reply 8

08/17/2011

I can't imagine being so incredibly selfish and so void of civic responsibility that you'd rather pay millions to "invent" a country just to make sure you don't help your fellow man.

by Anonymous

reply 9

08/17/2011

Wait until the first big storm. Calls for US or other countries' navies to come rescue them.%0D %0D %0D Send the bitches a bill for $5M and listen to them squawk.

by Anonymous

reply 10

08/17/2011

Wasn't that some April's Fools joke many years ago with Microsoft and Bill Gates wanting to escape taxes and state regulations?

by Anonymous

reply 11

08/17/2011

If this idea interests you at all, you might look for a novel called [italic]Island [/italic]by Thomas Perry. A group of people dump construction waste on a little spot of nothing island and get a community going. Most of Perry's novels are crime thrillers, and he's quite good at those. This is a bit more comic.

by Anonymous

reply 12

08/17/2011

Peter Thiel is family and a big GOProud backer.

by Anonymous

reply 13

08/17/2011

What will they name it, Douchebag Islands?

by Anonymous

reply 14

08/17/2011

Oh please let this happen. Then take the ships away and strand them there forever.%0D %0D Of course these douchebags will come back after a few weeks and write a book and a movie, claiming there were no problems and everything was great. Later, people will find out they cannibalized the fat ones.

by Anonymous

reply 15

08/17/2011

[quote]If this idea interests you at all, you might look for a novel called Island by Thomas Perry. A group of people dump construction waste on a little spot of nothing island and get a community going. Most of Perry's novels are crime thrillers, and he's quite good at those. This is a bit more comic.

I was picturing the videogame Bioshock more than anything else.

by Anonymous

reply 16

08/17/2011

So, a rich man buys an island and lets some people live on it for free. Sounds like welfare to me.

by Anonymous

reply 17

08/17/2011

[quote]Putting all the wingnuts on a man-made island with loose building codes ...

AND as an extra bonus, built near one of the planet's most active fault lines.

Let the hilarity begin.

by Anonymous

reply 18

08/17/2011

Just move to a third world country.

Wouldn't Moldavia fit the bill?

by Anonymous

reply 20

08/17/2011

Somalia clearly no longer fits the bill for Libertarian Paradise, since they've started to show signs of a functioning government.

by Anonymous

reply 21

08/17/2011

In his book, "The Education of Henry Adams," the author did a post-war analysis of The Confederacy that concluded the power behind secession came from men who hadn't built much on their own, but merely exploited labor and technology to suddenly amass previously unimaginable wealth. Yet they carried the delusion that they were somehow special because of this, and this delusion carried the whole nation into war.

Silicon Valley is like that.

by Anonymous

reply 22

08/17/2011

I get a picture of a place without laws or morality...no extradition.

Can you imagine what hellish things could happen in the situation?

by Anonymous

reply 23

08/17/2011

I like the idea of Libertarians having a 'sterile' test case for some of their good and their more crackpot ideas. It would be most interesting.

The idea may have come from Sealand, which is a generally unrecognized Principality just over 3 mi. off the E. coast of Great Britain.

Originally a WWII sea fort, it came under control of one of Britain's notorious pirate radio station operators in the 1960's, and has had a fascinating history ever since.

by Anonymous

reply 24

08/17/2011

Do you think Peter is a top or bottom?

by Anonymous

reply 25

05/04/2013

God, the Randians must be wetting themselves with anticipation.

Voice of the Night, I too thought of it as the setting for the next Bioshock game.

by Anonymous

reply 26

05/04/2013

Peter Thiel wishes he were John Adams, the very real lone survivor of male competition on Pitcairm Island. In 1800 only Adams remained of the Bounty mutineers and their male Tahitian servants, leaving him with 10 women and 23 children to raise. Something tells me he did a better job than Thiel would.

by Anonymous

reply 27

05/04/2013

Another idiot with more (unjustified, unearned) dollars than sense.

by Anonymous

reply 28

05/04/2013

"a kind of floating petri dish"

Well, they got that right.

by Anonymous

reply 29

05/04/2013

"a kind of floating petri dish for implementing policies that libertarians, stymied by indifference at the voting booths, have been unable to advance: no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons.""

In other words, a haven for tax avoidance and slave labor!

Read up on working conditions in Dubai, if you want to know what their vision of a Libertarian world will be like for people like us. No safety regulations, no minimum wages, no wages at all if the employer doesn't feel like paying you. And the employers hold the passports, and aren't about to give you enough money for a plane ticket home when they can work you to death.

by Anonymous

reply 30

05/04/2013

[all posts by ham-fisted troll a removed.]

by Anonymous

reply 31

05/04/2013

I would actually love to see this experiment come true. I want to see Ayn Rand's philosophy realized. Then and only then can we say whether it is a utopia or a fool's errand.

I suspect the only people who can afford to move to the island are the very wealthy. If that's the case, it's an imperfect experiment.

by Anonymous

reply 32

05/04/2013

"Looser building codes"? Like in India?

by Anonymous

reply 33

05/04/2013

R31, the conditions I describe are going on in Dubai and other unregulated places as we type, it's not something I made up.

by Anonymous

reply 34

05/04/2013

Of course, expatriots always have existed, however, for the super-wealthy,citizenship is becoming a thing of the past.

It's just a meaningless, stupid abstraction for us penniless rabble.

Billionaires already live on an island. Perhaps not a physical one but one more meaningful- their money can create impenetrable borders.

by Anonymous

reply 35

05/04/2013

No minimum wage! Oh great, can't wait to get a job there!

by Anonymous

reply 36

05/04/2013

What is the actual process for being recognized as a sovereign nation? Can't they just buy an actual island from a country that needs/wants money?

by Anonymous

reply 37

05/04/2013

Years ago, the National Lampoon published a book about the future and one of the chapters in it was about a libertarian town, i believe called Irvington after neoconservative grandaddy Irving Kristol, where there were no taxes, no speed limits, no road signs, etc. It was hilarious send-up.

by Anonymous

reply 38

05/04/2013

He's nuts and will lose all his money someday.

by Anonymous

reply 39

05/04/2013

In a libertarian paradise R38, there are no roads.

by Anonymous

reply 40

05/05/2013

[quote]in what way is holding someone's passport a "libertarian" belief? In what way is having someone work and then not paying them a libertarian belief?

No government regulation. Duh.

And if you're dumb enough to think that libertarians are above such tactics, I've got a bridge I'd like you to buy.

by Anonymous

reply 41

05/05/2013

Sounds like Lord of the Flies without a nice beach.

by Anonymous

reply 42

05/05/2013

Why NO welfare, but only "looser" building codes? Why NO minimum wage, but only "fewer" restrictions on weapons? The fascistic leanings of those who like to call themselves "libertarians" are so pathetically obvious. And even more sad is their fantasy that anything approaching a functioning human society can be built from something appropriately analogized to a "petri dish." Perhaps this can at least be useful in disabusing the broad swathes of the American public who are convinced that massive wealth=genius from their foolish deluded worship of the stupid rich.

by Anonymous

reply 43

05/05/2013

I think I'd much rather move to the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands.

They even declared war on Australia in order to force Australia to recognize their sovereignty by not responding.

At one time they were working toward issuing (pink, I believe) passports.

by Anonymous

reply 44

05/05/2013

Here's an article about the Gay Kingdom's war on Australia.

by Anonymous

reply 45

05/05/2013

Now that is one reality show I'd watch.

by Anonymous

reply 46

05/05/2013

Good. Let all libertarians move there and get their Ayn Rand on.

by Anonymous

reply 47

05/05/2013

Nothing says "genius" more than being the founder of PayPal, which means he's a high-tech grocery checkout clerk.

by Anonymous

reply 48

05/05/2013

No man is an island.

by Anonymous

reply 49

05/05/2013

Let the silly git go live on his glorified oil rig and see how long he lasts.

Shades of Howard Hughes, Citizen Kane....

by Anonymous

reply 50

05/05/2013

I want to know if these libertarian billionaires are willing to share islands with each other, or if each wants to be Godking of their own island. (And if "yes", whether they'll go to war with each other.) I also know who'd be dumb enough to work in a place where employees have no legal protections.

It's like these guys aspire to be Bond Villains.

by Anonymous

reply 51

05/05/2013

Imagine being on an island, possibly working for less than minimum wage, having to buy imported food from some asshole that doesn't even want to pay taxes.

by Anonymous

reply 52

05/06/2013

Nobody answered my question, which is why I dragged up this thread.

by Anonymous

reply 53

05/06/2013

There's a reason 98% of all Libertarians are over-privileged educated white men. Think about it. They have no clue that they're privileged. They have NO IDEA what it's like to live in a world without family, connections, privilege, money, and opportunity. Born on 3rd base, think they hit a triple.

by Anonymous

reply 54

05/06/2013

R27, Does anyone know what really happened to the other males on Pitcairn island? Google search says murder and suicide; doesn't make sense to me.

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